News, Views and Analysis

The Globe & Mail's discourtesy

“The vindictive discourtesy of three Air Canada baggage handlers on Thursday toward Lisa Raitt, the federal Minister of Labour” is how an editorial in the Globe & Mail began this Tuesday, and that Pecksniffian intro almost made me stop reading then and there.

What crass, bone-headed hypocrisy by the egregious fawners at the G&M, on a page that, as always, contains this injunction from Junius: “The subject who is truly loyal to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.”

Arbitrary measures is all we’ve been getting from Raitt since she became Minister of Labour. More precisely, it’s all the peons under her control have been getting. There was the Canada Post lockout—not a strike—which was ended last June by legislation that gave the workers less than the employer’s final offer. And there has been her ceaseless interference on the employer’s side at Air Canada, where labour-relations troubles have unsurprisingly mounted.

“Cancer is sexy” Raitt has always been in over her head, and in her latest incarnation as labour minister has demonstrated that she has no conception of her proper role. Her only desire in her present office is to smash unions and teach the workers their place.

Against her disgraceful, high-handed behaviour, all the plebes could do was give her a slow clap as she swanned by at the Toronto airport. But this was enough to summon the Lord Chamberlains at the Globe to warn the rude peasants to show proper respect for this high-rolling princess.

“Vindictive discourtesy?” No doubt the baggage-handlers should have averted their gaze and tugged their forelocks like good little serfs.

And of course the Globe aristocrats had nothing to say about this:

While Lisa Raitt reportedly had no problem referring to the baggage handlers at Air Canada as “animals,” and demanding their arrest (her office has since denied that she did any such thing), this pig was apparently allowed to go on his merry way, despite having committed an assault. (If any reader can identify him, let me know back-channel. I’ll put his name up in lights.)

In fairness, the Globe & Mail editorial team seems to have known better in the recent past. But it disgraced itself on this occasion. Luckily—and this doesn’t happen often—the commenters have, by and large, torn a strip off those pontificating, finger-wagging princelings. Now let’s have an apology to the workers they have so gratuitously insulted.

UPDATE: Giving some credence to the union version of the confrontation with Raitt is this story: a CUPW worker criticized her to her face at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. Not long after, Stephen Harper’s Praetorian Guard came to his office for a friendly chat….[H/t Sharpay Point, via deBeauxOs b/c]